Before We Leave on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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Before We Leave is a city building game set in a cozy corner of the universe. Nurture your Peeps and their surroundings while rebuilding and rediscovering civilisation. Settle new lands and planets while avoiding hungry Space Whales.
Before We Leave is a city builder, casual and economy game
developed by Balancing Monkey Games
and published by Team17.
Released on May 13th 2021 is available on Windows and MacOS
in 10 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Turkish and Japanese.
It has received 1,637 reviews of which 1,283 were positive and 354 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.5 out of 10. 😊
The game is currently priced at 17.99€ on Steam, but you can find it for less on Eneba.
The Steam community has classified Before We Leave into these genres:
System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10 (64 bit only)
- Processor: Intel Core i5-4300U or AMD Phenom II X4 975
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti or AMD Radeon HD 4890
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 2 GB available space
MacOS
- OS: OSX 10.14.2 Mojave (64-bit)
- Processor: Intel® Core™ i5 3.0GHz, 21.5
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: 2 GB RAM
- Storage: 2 GB available space
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
I've been on a city builder kick lately and for anyone that is interested in that genre, I'd like to call your attention to a game called Before We Leave. I picked it up in the summer sale partly because it was 75% off. It's a city builder\lite puzzle game (aka cozy city builders I think). You start with a small number of "peeps" emerging from a bunker. From there, it's got the typical citybuilder traits and it does those very well. You have research, resource generation, resource conversion, adjacency bonuses, the whole 9 yard. Below are the areas that make it stand out to me. [*] Logistics system - the game has a very involved and detailed resource web, and they have integrated that into a simple to use logistics system. Once you repair the derelict ancient boat that is lying near your bunker, you use that ship to go and explore the planet. When you find a new island on the other side of the world, you plop down a port and start a new colony. But instead of starting from scratch, wouldn't it be nice if the mother colony sent us some stuff? There is a shipping screen that is simple to use. When you open it, you can select each of your colonies and pick any resource and decide what amount you want the colony to maintain, and based on that number it will either import or export the resource. Then you open your list of ships, and set them to "Auto", and those ships start moving resources around to try to maintain the numbers. It allows the management of a complicated line of supply to be handled with ease. [*] Starting over - as mentioned before, you will likely start at least one other colony during each run. Then game encourages you to find a way off of the planet, and that is a long and tough slog in and or itself. But when you finally launch the spaceship and get ready for the win screen, you are instead presented with a "Space Screen". It is similar to the ship screen, but on this screen you can move the spaceship to a new planet. Then you land, and start the whole thing again. But the colonies on your first planet are still humming along, which is a great mechanic as it allows the people who like building big efficient colonies to play that way, and those that like following the power spike with new beginnings to play that way. Or mix and match. [*] Feedback - there are a lot of interconnected mechanics in the game and there are times that things will happen that aren't obvious at the moment. For instance, I had a new colony that was rich in mining resources, so I decided to make into my version of the rust belt. I plopped down a couple of stone quarries and some iron mines and moved onto something else. The game let me know with prominent icons that my oil pump wasn't being built because I didn't have any iron. "What do you mean, game? I just threw 5 mines at you!" But the mines were indeed not producing. I checked the mines and none had any workers, so I kept looking at the icons to see if I could see what the blocker was. I finally figured it out, and if I hadn't used all of the reports and icons and such that the game gave me, I probably would have quit in frustration. What happened was that this island was a mix of grasslands and desert. I built the road from my houses to the mountains where the mines were through the desert, having forgotten that walking through the desert makes the peeps tired. My peeps were going to work, arriving exhausted, resting, and then going home having done no work. And what statistics are in the game are presented in an intelligent way; not only does it show resource totals like every other city builder, but this one shows you the stats in ways that help. Example, you can view each island's resource numbers. But when you look at them, they show the number AND the number allocated to certain buildings, the amount being exported, and the expected max consumption to allow you to know the whole story at a glance. No more head math as it's all presented to you for consumption. I hope more games catch on to this. [*] Interaction - everything seems to have an effect on everything else. If you build your peeps a house, where you place it matters. If you place it by a field, the house will support one extra peep. If you place it by another house, you get another peep bonus. But if you place it by a well, it gets a penalty. Also, everything has to connect to a road, and if you've boxed yourself in you might have to do some rearranging to get out of it. Then there is the desert issue I mentioned above. And there is pollution, which makes the peeps sad. Everything in the game has an affect on at least one other thing, but usually more than one is the reality. That makes for very interesting scenarios, and if you are a min\maxer, you will get in nirvana. It's not the most beautiful game, but it really doesn't matter. The engine in this game is designed to make the whole city building process fun. It works to keep you informed while you play to cut down on frustration. It rewards you for reaching little milestones. And to fill up all of the islands on all of the planets in a single game would likely take 50 or more hours of gaming and you can decide at any point to just start over.
Expand the review
Different scenarios and the ability to change difficulty levels keeps the replay high.
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Before We Leave is overall an okay city builder, but suffers from a couple of significant issues. 1: The game appears to be horribly unoptimized and requires a significantly better computer than it should need to run. It straight up did not run on my old computer and causes excessive heating on my current one, which is a gaming laptop. 2: The game is very repetitive, forcing you to build up the exact same infrastructure on every planet you visit with no variation besides the different biomes. 3: The shipping UI is horribly designed and needs to be completely redone. The developers decided to be extremely lazy and used the same UI with the same import/export settings for both sea and space shipping. Combined with only being able to create a single spaceport per planet this results in serious issues, such as items that need to be exported to another planet not being exported if those items also need to be imported from a different island. A great example of how bad the shipping system is are two islands I have that generated two tiles apart. The UI treats them as a single island, yet I am unable to build a bridge between them. Trying to transport resources between the two “combined” islands is extremely tedious and requires excessive micromanagement due to the UI not supporting exporting and importing from the same island.
Expand the review
This game is amazing. I originally discovered it on a sale on PlayStation + on my PS5. I got almost every trophy there but the PS version doesn't have the Toxic Wasteland update or other additions that the PC version does. It's worth getting this game just for that and playing it again. Replayability is high as there's different worlds with different biomes that you won't encounter in just one playthrough. Some planets will not have the same resources as another, so you have to figure out ways to get everything to work together as a cohesive. The smart shipping that the PC version has makes shipping SO much simpler than manually setting what you need shipped and manually setting where you need whatever it is shipped to. The studio is already making the sequel, Beyond The Stars right now so I recommend playing Before We Leave first so you understand the story for Beyond The Stars. If you enjoy building cities, discovering new technology and seeing different enviroments, I recommend this game! However, be aware that this is a casual game. There's no action, no warfare, just a big ol' space whale that occasionally eats your planets. No biggie!
Expand the review
It's definitely a casual builder, but the resource management between islands/planets can be a lot to manage. Overall I played a lot when it was on game pass, and just picked it up for 5 bucks on sale, and it's easily worth the sale price.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Before We Leave is currently priced at 17.99€ on Steam.
Before We Leave is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 17.99€ on Steam.
Before We Leave received 1,283 positive votes out of a total of 1,637 achieving a rating of 7.53.
😊
Before We Leave was developed by Balancing Monkey Games and published by Team17.
Before We Leave is playable and fully supported on Windows.
Before We Leave is playable and fully supported on MacOS.
Before We Leave is not playable on Linux.
Before We Leave is a single-player game.
There is a DLC available for Before We Leave. Explore additional content available for Before We Leave on Steam.
Before We Leave does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
Before We Leave does not support Steam Remote Play.
Before We Leave is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for Before We Leave.
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Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.
Last Updates| Steam data | 12 September 2025 15:17 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 09 September 2025 02:06 |
| Steam price | 14 September 2025 04:27 |
| Steam reviews | 13 September 2025 22:05 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Before We Leave, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Before We Leave
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Before We Leave concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Before We Leave compatibility
Game modes
Features
Online players
20
Developer
Balancing Monkey Games
Publisher
Team17
Release
13 May 2021
Platforms
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